submissions
| Skinny Puppy – VX Gas Attack Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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Yes, the Iran-Iraq war. More specifically, it deals with the Halabja poison gas attack, which occurred on 16 March 1988. Saddam ordered to bomb the Kurdish town of Halabja with chemical weapons. Around 5,000 civilians died and 7,000 were injured. Real horror... Imagine those people dying in the streets, women, children... They should have executed Hussein this way, hanging's not enough. |
submissions
| Skinny Puppy – Spasmolytic Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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Drug addiction, urban industrial paranoia, alienation... The best song on their best album. Every single second of Too Dark Park is brilliant. |
submissions
| Skinny Puppy – Rivers Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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The vampire's monologue is sampled from Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers (Dance of the Vampires). And there’s some other samples, I recognise one from Clockwork Orange. |
submissions
| Swans – Stay Here Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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This one is the best! The most brutal track on Filth, together with “Freak”. Sheer power, brutality and destruction. This is noise-hardcore at its most intense. The best way to open the album; the first track on the first album defined Swans’ sound for many years that followed. Lyricwise, it’s what the superior (master, employer...) says to the subordinate (slave, employee...). Just a set of orders intended to erase any personality and free will and to turn the person into a robot. |
submissions
| Swans – Sensitive Skin Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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The second verse is missing: “Strapped to the chair, skin peeled back, turned inside out, shown the sickening fact”. And at the end of the third verse there’s: “Trading sounds that come up from the stomach and stick in the other one’s throat.” My favourite track on their 1st EP, the only one that is relatively similar to their later music. But it’s still very different. The 1st EP is pure No Wave, while Filth, released the following year, sounds like a completely different band. And that’s good, Swans invented something that absolutely nobody had ever done before. True avant-garde. |
submissions
| Swans – Sealed in Skin Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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It’s about sex, in a pretty disgusting manner. I think he says “I’ll hide in your womb”. That would make sense as well. I love this track, it's unbelievably dark. |
submissions
| Swans – Power and Sacrifice Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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Isn’t there a connection with the Gulf War? The line “I'll wash America with blood”... It’s also from the same year – 1991. Anyway, it’s the best song on White Light. |
submissions
| Swans – Money Is Flesh Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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Prostitution, either literal or metaphorical. Buying other people's bodies for money, that’s all. Just like “A Screw”. My favourite on Greed/Holy Money. It’s Swans at their most industrial. |
submissions
| Swans – Mona Lisa, Mother Earth Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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Shame no one has commented on this song. In my opinion, it’s one of the best on The Burning World, together with “Let It Come Down” and “See No More”. And in fact it’s the title track; the name of the album comes from this song. Not much to say about the meaning though, it’s typical of later Swans – very dark, poetic and apocalyptic metaphysical visions and ruminations. |
submissions
| Swans – God Damn the Sun Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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To Marquez: It’s a calla lily, a photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe, who died that year (1989) around the time The Burning World was released. Actually, the symbolism could be erotic or pornographic, it’s not that innocent as it seems. Nothing unusual in Mapplethorpe’s work, and as far as I know, the calla was a symbol of the female genitalia in Art Nouveau, or later. |
submissions
| Swans – Gang Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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Kind of an optimistic ending of the debut album :-) I see it as an expression of a hunger for revenge on the abusive violator. The song sounds as if the master tape was at half speed by accident :-) Great... |
submissions
| Swans – Cop Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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Great song, almost “melodic” in the context of early Swans. I love the way Gira keeps on repeating the words “heat hurts” for nearly 4 minutes and changes the pitch of his voice from brutal powerful screaming to shrieks for help to exhausted, tortured whispering. This is a musical rendering of beating someone slowly and systematically to death.
By the way, here I see some slight inconsistencies with what is actually sung and printed in the lyric sheet that came with the CD. |
submissions
| Swans – Children of God Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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I fail to see any irony there. I mean, I know the background of the album's ideas, I know there's supposed to be some criticism, but not in this song. It seems sincere and pure. Why would someone create such an anthemic and majestic song with sarcastic lyrics? It would be counterproductive. I don't say this to defend Christianity or whatever; I'm an atheist. Anyway, it’s an incredibly powerful and brilliant song; one of the best on what is undoubtedly their best album. |
submissions
| Swans – Blind Love Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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Good point, Cynothoglys. And another one possible interpretation: The song could be “sung” by an unborn child, emotionally blackmailing his mother. That is, binding her with her mother’s love to blindly love the child for the rest of her life. “I’m a dead man” could mean “I’m unborn yet”. But this is less likely to be the true meaning. |
submissions
| Swans – Blackout Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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I would say it is the master telling his slave to shut up and stop thinking and just keep on working like a machine. |
submissions
| Swans – All Lined Up Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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And btw, I much prefer the version called “I See Them All Lined Up” which is on Gira’s solo album Drainland. It’s a flashback of the rhythmical industrial minimalism of Swans circa 1985. |
submissions
| Swans – All Lined Up Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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I always thought of this as a monologue of God. A sadistic God, that is. He looks at people suffering, living their worthless lives and then dying in pain, and takes perverse pleasure in seeing them suffer. These people spell his name – it could mean they are praying to him. Such a view of God occurs in people who face extreme pain and suffering and, as a natural reaction, they blame God and question his existence “How could he allow something like this to happen?” And yes, there are also references to concentration camps. |
submissions
| The Legendary Pink Dots – Sterre Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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A beautiful ballad and perhaps the best song on Hallway of the Gods in my opinion. Seems to be about being saved by love, or it could be that she died and flew to Heaven and now can be seen in visions somewhere at the sky among the stars. Very nice and gentle... |
submissions
| The Legendary Pink Dots – A Space Between Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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Edward’s lyrics sometimes resemble fables or parables, where inanimate things and phenomena have names and act like living entities. This song seems to be about that. |
submissions
| The Legendary Pink Dots – The Month After Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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One of the best songs on The Golden Age. The music sometimes gets almost circus-like, which sharply contrasts with the dark message. It’s probably about feeling depressed, taking pills against the sadness and pain, then feeling empty or not feeling anything at all. Getting older and wiser, many things in life lose their magic. |
submissions
| The Legendary Pink Dots – The Gallery Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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Beautifully written story of the strange people living in the same house/block of flats. The LPD’s have a lyrically similar song called “Wildlife Estate” on Malachai. Both are great. |
submissions
| The Legendary Pink Dots – The Collector Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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Another one that can only come from the Dots, both music & lyrics. Very funny and, at the same time, poetic description of an obsessive-compulsive collector/hoarder. I love the part with the Eiffel Towers :-) |
submissions
| The Legendary Pink Dots – Stoned Obituary Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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A 12-minute masterpiece. It’s one of the first few LPD tracks I ever heard, some 14 years ago, and definitely the first one to catch my attention. Especially the few last minutes, when he sings what I think is rather “Nomini PATRI spiritus sancti ET filia”, plus some other words, including “Christus”. And yes, it’s a surreal rendering of the Crucifixion. Great wordplay, as always. |
submissions
| The Legendary Pink Dots – So Gallantly Screaming Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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This was written in 1985, but reading or listening to it after September 11, 2001 is quite scary. It’s about the downfall of America and destruction of the American dream. EK-S may have some prophetic abilities, but let’s just hope he’s not right with such dark visions in the first two verses (although I’m from Central Europe and many people here wouldn’t care :-)) Anyway, it’s a pretty complex composition and I especially like the industrial part midway of the track. It's obvious that Steven Stapleton was there in the studio... And the strings are good, too. I think Abraham, Martin and John are supposed to be Lincoln, ML King and JFK. All three of them were assassinated... |
submissions
| The Legendary Pink Dots – Prisoner Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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The tracks “Demonism” and “Prisoner” are incorrectly separated on the PIAS version of Asylum (or maybe all versions, I have the PIAS). Various PIAS editions of 1980’s LPD albums have tracking problems. These are in fact two independent songs, but since they are mixed that way, they can be considered related. “Demonism” is the brilliant instrumental violin thing lasting about a minute, and “Prisoner” is the dark electro-pop song that follows. And the lyrics end like this: “A small release. An anaesthetic. This headache's driving me insane.” Edward must have had a terrible headache when he wrote this :-) |
submissions
| The Legendary Pink Dots – Nine Shades to the Circle Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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This is a fascinating track, both music and lyrics. Obviously, it’s a kind of a recurring bad dream, the day always starts the same, then from one specific point the versions differ, three types of different ending suddenly interrupted, and then he wakes up again at the beginning of the same day, over and over again, imprisoned in a time loop. Could it be that the “I found your ear wrapped in a tissue” line is a reference to Blue Velvet? Who knows... |
submissions
| The Legendary Pink Dots – Mmmmmmmmmmmm... Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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One of my all time LPD favourites. Kind of a perverted vegetarian manifesto, probably inspired by Orwell’s Animal Farm. It’s bleakly funny and both versions are great. Dark, almost gothic guitar riffs and funky basslines. |
submissions
| The Legendary Pink Dots – Madame Guillotine Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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Not just the Holocaust, but also the French Revolution, as well as Britain’s colonial past, racism... These are some of Edward’s lyrical themes in those of his lyrics, which are not very personal, but rather deal with the state of the world. |
submissions
| The Legendary Pink Dots – Kitto Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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One of the funniest LPD songs ever, together with “Peek-A-Boo” :-) And it’s supposed to be a mock commercial for a non-existent brand of cat food. Like the other two songs on Faces in the Fire – Blasto and Sleeso. They’re a similar mystification, except that they promote a cleaning agent and a pornographic video respectively :-) |
submissions
| The Legendary Pink Dots – Just a Lifetime Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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It’s “one fine day the planet crumbled”, not “say”. Sort of an ecology/environmental topic... The devastation of the Earth has made all the water disappear from its surface, everything is dried and people live underground. I love the intro of this song... |
submissions
| The Legendary Pink Dots – Expresso Noir Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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This is a great song. I first heard live on a gig, and only after that I got The Maria Dimension. It’s one of the best pieces there, musically and lyrically. A wonderfully dark story of a ride on a mysterious train that never stops, nobody know where it’s going and strange THINGS happen there. Like a bad dream, it has the dreamy atmosphere. I love all the wordplays, it’s EK-S at his best. “midnight express from Atlantis...” |
submissions
| The Legendary Pink Dots – Expresso Noir Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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This is a great song. I first heard it live on a gig, and only after that I got The Maria Dimension. It’s one of the best pieces there, musically and lyrically. A wonderfully dark story of a ride on a mysterious train that never stops, nobody knows where it’s going and strange this happen there. Like a bad dream, it has the dreamy atmosphere. I love all the wordplays, it’s EK-S at his best. “midnight express from Atlantis...” |
submissions
| The Legendary Pink Dots – Echo Police Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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This is quite paranoid and it’s hard to guess what it means. But given the fact that the entire Asylum album is supposed to be kind of a concept album about insanity, the Echo Police can be a metaphor of a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst who tries to “infiltrate” into a patient’s mind, but fails – the Echo Police just don’t know how... But it can be something completely different. Anyway, it’s my favourite song on Asylum and the best way to open the album. |
submissions
| The Legendary Pink Dots – Dying for the Emperor Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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This is a lyric that only Edward could have written. Nobody else would write something like this :-) A story of a guy who plays a computer/video game, becomes so immersed in the game that he forgets to live, ignores everybody and everything and just keeps on destroying those electronic aliens, but they still keep on appearing and eventually he loses the game and actually loses his life – he dies of exhaustion. It’s scary and funny at the same time, like many Edward’s lyrics. And the bleeping electronic sounds imitate the music of early video games as closely as possible. Really nice... |
submissions
| The Legendary Pink Dots – A Strychnine Kiss Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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It seems to be about greediness and opportunism of the Catholic Church. We all know the pictures of priests siegheiling with Nazi troops... I think the “Pole” is supposed to be John Paul II, who was pope at the time of recording of this song. This song has the drum machine and bass guitar sound that is so typical of 1986/1987 era Dots. |
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